Conventions Are Now Just Empty Events To Keep Crazy Zealots Occupied

Party platforms are worthless mounds of drivel that have no
impact on what U.S. leaders of either party actually do.

Here’s
what we wrote on the occasion of the GOP’s platform being
the hot topic of discussion among our media elites:

Hungry for story lines, any story lines, the press has
occasionally tried to gin a little bit of drama out of fights
over the party platform, but the honest truth is that no party
platform means anything in American politics anymore.

No president refers back to the platform in framing
legislation, no congressional leader uses it to set the
legislative agenda, no living soul ever reads or quotes it for
any purpose whatever. No historian of American party politics
goes back to study them, no journalist refers to them more than
a week after the convention.

Writing platforms is a consolation prize that party leaders
give people they don’t think are very smart or very important
but want to keep happy.

The
kerfluffle over the Democrats’ platform’s dropping of “God”
and “Jerusalem” and then hastily stuffing them back in only
illustrates the point.

A senior administration official emphasized that the president
had intervened to bring the platform in line with his own
views. “The president expressed his view in 2008, and it hasn’t
changed,” the official said. “The party platform has not
changed from 2008. And the position of the United States
government hasn’t changed in decades as it relates to Israel’s
capital and peace negotiations.”

President Obama’s policies on Israel and the relationship of
church and state in the U.S. are what they are, and no sane
person can think that if re-elected he would waste a nanosecond
wondering if he should change those policies because of
language that was or wasn’t in the party platform.

Basically, both parties turn the platforms over to anybody who
really wants the thankless, pointless job and then lets them
play in the sandbox and do whatever they want as long as they
don’t get out of line. The minute the platform drafters go too
far, the party adults slap them down. This is all about PR.
Nothing else.

But in this, the party platforms are on the same level as the
conventions themselves: conventions used to be forums where
actual decisions got made and platforms used to represent
actual programs that the parties would seriously try to carry
out if they succeeded at the polls. Today conventions survive
as infomercials when speakers and candidates from both parties
can grab some airtime as they carry out a scripted program. And
because party organizations are so weak, no pol from either
party feels in any way bound to the promises or statements
written into the platforms.

It’s all theater and frankly not very good theater at that.
Conventions are likely to continue to slowly leak importance
and relevance from cycle to cycle. In the meantime, serious,
thoughtful observers of politics will watch them more for
purposes of amusement than for anything else.